


The Wrong Life

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season/Series 07, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 15:39:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11740065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Cursed Killian senses something is wrong, especially given the dreams he's been having. Spoilers (and a lot of speculation) for S7.





	The Wrong Life

_Her hair smells like sunlight and some kind of horrible, fake coconut scent._

_He buries his nose in the long tresses and breathes deep, and he can feel the smile stretching his lips over his teeth. It should feel foreign, that kind of smile, but it never does. Not in this place._

_“I wondered when you’d wake up,” the woman says as he presses against her back, wrapping his arms around her thin frame. She’s barely wearing enough clothes to be outside as they are, her feet bare on the painted wooden slats of the porch, in shorts and a tank top with no bra underneath. He slides his hand up under the stretchy fabric and palms one of her breasts, making her flinch in his arms._

_“You’re gonna make me spill my coffee,” she scolds, but her voice is warm, and she not-very-subtly pushes her ass back into the cradle of his hips._

_“Come back to bed,” he rasps, pulling his head back just enough to disentangle the threads of her hair from his scruffy beard before diving back in and gliding his nose along the skin of her neck._

_“Oh, Mr. Always-up-by-sunrise wants to go back to bed, huh? Can’t deal with me being the early riser for once?” She is teasing personified, pretending to be affronted even as her hips move against him in a tortuous rhythm._

_“I couldn’t deal with you not being in my arms, darling. And right now I can’t deal with not being inside you.”_

_That bold statement makes her moan, and she reaches back with her free hand and combs her fingers through his hair._

_“We don’t have time,” she says, but she tilts her head back against his shoulder, her long, pale neck an invitation he can’t refuse._

_“Of course we do, my love. We have our whole lives for this.” He scrapes his teeth against her skin, making her shudder._

_“God, I love you,” she murmurs, but pulls out of his arms, leaving him suddenly chilled without the warmth of her body. “I miss you.”_

_I’m right here, he starts to say, but a glint of metal catches his eye, and he looks down. In place of his left hand, a shiny, metal hook winks in the morning sunlight._

_“What–?”_

_“Try to remember. Remember me. Remember who you are.”_

His eyes snap open to the sight of the cracked ceiling of his aging apartment. He’s kicked the covers off during the night and he shivers, the sputtering old radiator producing meager heat to warm his bones. Sitting up, Rogers groans in the face of another sunless day.

~*~

He holds a cup of coffee with his prosthetic hand, absently clicking through case files on his computer with the other. The bustle of a busy police station surrounds him, and he sits like the eye in the center of a storm, a master at the art of looking very busy while his mind is somewhere else entirely.

He’s used to dreaming of the blonde woman by now. She’s so ever-present in his dreams that if he were to suddenly see her in real life, he almost thinks it wouldn’t seem remarkable. Even though seeing a woman who only exists in one’s dreams would be objectively remarkable. For a creation of his sleeping brain, she’s very specific. Not a vague, perfect face, but one with flaws. When he wakes in the night from dreaming of her, he closes his eyes and sears the image of her into his mind. He can see the tiny hairs that are growing back from the last time she had her eyebrows waxed, the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles, the way her eyeliner always looks a little bit better on the right side than on the left. He can feel the alternating texture of the faint stretch marks on her belly under his fingers. He can smell her, that mix of antiperspirant and shampoo and feminine musk; just imagining her smell causes a stirring in his groin. He wishes he were a painter or a sculptor, because it feels like no mental image has ever been clearer to him than the image of this woman. His whole world is gray and dark and she is a technicolor kaleidoscope by comparison. A chorus of singers in an acoustically perfect concert hall after a lifetime of silence.

He snorts at his own ridiculously poetic musings. His partner would fall out of his chair laughing if he knew the sorts of fantasies that were occupying Rogers’ mind of late. With a shake of his head, he tries to refocus on the victims’ statements he’s been reading, a litany of sorrow in black and white text. There are no happy endings, he thinks suddenly, and can’t imagine why that stray idea makes him so sad.

Rogers walks his beat through the drizzling rain that afternoon, police hat and windbreaker doing little to keep him from being soaked through. He ducks into his favorite bodega, giving Mrs. Lopez a smile and making his way over toward the coffee. His eyes take in everything; the thin girl with the sleeve tattoos and pink hair contemplating a packet of Red Vines, the grandmother with a half gallon of milk and the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest, the three boys in hooded sweatshirts looking too innocently at the display of pork rinds that just happens to be across from the beer. He knows if he searched them he’d find fake IDs in their pockets, but today he can’t be bothered. He pays for his coffee and leaves the patrons to their candy and illegal beer and soap opera magazines.

He eats dinner – rewarmed Chinese food – alone, the television on to fill the empty apartment with noise, but he pays it no attention. Another gray day is done. With nothing else to do, he goes to bed. As he falls asleep, he rubs at the ring finger of his right hand with his thumb. He has a nagging feeling there’s supposed to be a ring there, but he’s uncertain as to why.

~*~

_Wooden practice swords clack together with a satisfying noise, the vibration of the impact shuddering up into his arm. “Again,” he says to his opponent._

_The boy (not a boy now; nearly a man) raises his sword and comes at him, his sweaty brow furrowed in concentration. “You’re telegraphing your attack, lad,” he says, parrying it easily._

_With an angry frown, the boy shakes his shoulders to loosen them and resumes his stance. This time when he attacks, the boy feints right and then goes left, catching him off balance. He barely catches the sword with his hook before it delivers a “killing” blow._

_“That’s not fair. I can’t just reach out with my left hand and stop your sword,” the boy complains._

_“Yes, that was foremost in my mind when I lost my hand – that it would make me a better swordsman. And there’s hardly any downside,” he says with an arched eyebrow._

_The lad looks suitably abashed. “Sorry.”_

_“It’s all right.” He positions himself again, boots settling into the thick grass. “Again.”_

_“If you guys trample my flower bed, there’s gonna be hell to pay,” the blonde woman says as she comes around the corner of the house to join them in the yard._

_“There are no flowers in your sad little flower bed, love. How can we trample them?”_

_She pouts. “It’s a work in progress. I bet there would be flowers if you weren’t always stomping through there, swinging swords at each other.”_

_“We haven’t, Mom, I swear,” the lad says, his wrist rotating, sword tracing out a circle in the air. “You’re just a terrible gardener.”_

_“Wow, okay. Wow. This from my own son.” She folds her arms under her breasts, her face pinched as she tries to hide a smile. The diamond ring on her finger catches the sunlight, and for a moment he can’t take his eyes off of it._

_“Come on, Mom, you’re good at a lot of things. Just not gardening.”_

_“All right, well, why don’t you guys get cleaned up and come in for dinner, and we can discuss how you’re going to take over more of the yard work, since I’m so terrible at it,” she says to her son._

_“Wait, what?” The boy holds his hands up in surrender. “I take it back, you’re awesome at gardening.”_

_The woman gives him a playful shove on the shoulder. “Go wash your hands.”_

_The boy disappears into the house. Taken by her beauty, Rogers (no, not Rogers. That’s not my name) pulls the woman into his arms._

_“Eww, you’re sweaty,” she says, squirming as he plants a kiss on her mouth._

_“You love it,” he responds, and the lust that flickers in her eyes confirms the truth of his words. She kisses him again and then draws away with an expression full of promise, her hand holding onto his hook as she pulls him toward the house. His feet stay planted in the grass. He wants to move, but he can’t budge._

_“Come on, Killian,” she says. “Please come home.”_

_“I can’t,” he gasps._

_“You will. You’ll find me. We always find each other.”_

~*~

It’s Friday, and he pushes through the door of Roni’s, the thought of a cold beer on his tongue making his mouth water. The place is crowded with cops most of the time, but especially on Friday nights. Rogers waves to a few acquaintances, making his way to the end of the bar and hoping no one feels inspired to come socialize with him.

His muscles ache as if he’s been sword fighting for real and not just in his dreams. The dream of wooden swords and a teenage boy who seems almost like a son dissolved into the ring of metal against metal and the flutter of white sails overhead and vast expanses of ocean in every direction. He was different in that dream, villainous; running a naval officer through with his sword without hesitation, he laughed as the man collapsed to the deck of the ship, blood sputtering from his lips. He smelled the copper tang of it, and the unwashed men at his side. He crowed as chests of coins were brought up from the ship’s hold, and he ran his fingers through the gold and silver.

Without asking what he wants, Roni puts an ale in front of him; the only English brown ale she keeps on tap. He likes to think she keeps it for him, when she very easily could have replaced it with another trendy IPA or sour or raspberry-flavored wheat beer or whatever it is the kids are drinking these days. He raises the glass to her in thanks and takes a drink, sighing with satisfaction. Rogers has very few pleasures in his life, but at least he has this: the end of the work day and a cold glass in his hand.

Surveying the room, he sees a young man with a messenger bag slung across his chest walk in. Rogers is immediately startled, looking at him, because he looks so much like the boy in his dream. He is older – probably thirty, if Rogers had to guess – but compared to the boy he dreamt of, this man could have been one of those age-progressed images of missing persons that paper the precinct wall.

The man looks around uneasily, like he’s never been in here and feels out of place. Perhaps several years ago he would have been, but the neighborhood is increasingly populated by guys just like him – white and clean-cut, with messenger bags on their shoulders and a taste for those beers that Rogers hates.

Rogers looks for the bartender. “Roni,” he calls.

She makes her way over, her brown, curly hair catching the lights of the bar and seeming to change color as she walks. “Yeah? Did you want food, Rogers?”

“No, I was just…” He indicates messenger-bag man with a tilt of his head. “Have you seen that guy in here before?”

Not that he gave Roni much thought, but if he’d ever been asked, Rogers would have said that she was an easygoing, cheerful person with a smile for everyone. But now she looks at the man, a handsome but otherwise nondescript person the likes of which probably walks into her bar twenty times a night, and it’s like a crack inside her opens up. For a moment, Rogers gets a peek at a deep well of sadness underneath her cheerful persona. Then just as quickly, it disappears.

“Nope,” she says, turning back to him, her carefully made-up face impassive. “Never seen him before. Why?”

He shrugs, taking a drink of his beer. “No reason.”

~*~

He has two night shifts coming up, so he’s trying to sleep on a Wednesday afternoon, and of course it’s his luck that for once the sun is actually shining. Cursing, he rolls away from his bedroom window and its inadequate curtains and covers his head with a pillow.

Finally he sinks into a shallow, fitful sleep, and of course she is there, waiting for him.

_Her long hair tickles his stomach, and he suppresses an unmanly giggle. Then her lips form a seal on the skin just underneath his ribs. She sucks hard, and he gasps._

_The bed is large; he lies in the middle of it and reaches out with both of his long arms, just barely reaching the edges. He’s never had a bed this big. Has he?_

_The blonde continues to work at his abdomen with her mouth, following the trail of hair down from his navel, making him think she’s just about to get down to business, but then detouring up his side and making him squirm with impatience. She laughs, her teeth grazing his side; she knows exactly what she’s doing._

_“You’re a demon,” he groans._

_She’s still laughing. “I thought I was an angel. That’s what you called me last night.”_

_“Clearly I was mistaken. You must have ensorcelled me somehow.”_

_Sliding down his body again, she darts her tongue out and flicks the tip of his cock with it. “Is this what you want?”_

_His fingers glide into her hair, the strands tumbling over the back of his hand. “More.”_

_She takes the head in her mouth, running her tongue around the ridge of him, gentle and teasing. Slowly she draws him in, deeper with each stroke, her head bobbing as she takes more and more of him inside her wet mouth. He moans, trying not to thrust up with his hips._

_“No, I was right the first time. You are an angel.”_

_She hums as if in agreement, sucking as she draws away each time, the obscene sound of it filling his ears. It feels so good, and she doesn’t stop, she keeps going with that perfect, filthy mouth. His wife, his lover, his partner, and even as he gets close (and gods, he’s so close) he knows it’s not real. It can’t be real. No woman like this could ever be his. No woman like this could ever look at him with the love in her eyes that he sees every night when he closes his eyes._

He awakes suddenly, his face sweating under the pillow, his hand shoved down the front of his boxers and gripping his erection. Pushing the pillow aside, he rolls onto his back, squeezing his cock and stroking fast, needing release desperately.

His eyes clamp shut and he thinks of her, the way she looks when she fucks him, hips grinding and breasts bouncing, her long hair trailing down her back. He pumps his fist and imagines he’s inside her, her legs a vice around his hips, her breathy gasps a counterpoint to his own tortured groans.

He comes with a shout, squeezing and stroking himself through it until he relaxes back against the bed, his rocketing heartbeat starting to slow down, his throat parched. Reaching down onto the floor, he picks up a t-shirt that he discarded earlier and cleans himself up. He half-heartedly throws it at the hamper.

After another half-hour of trying to sleep, he drags himself out of bed, blinking his eyes in the late afternoon light. With a heavy sigh, he heads to the shower.

~*~

“It’s a little early for a beer, don’t you think, Rogers?” Roni says when he opens the door to her bar.

“I just finished a night shift.” He sits down on his regular stool. “It’s quitting time for me.”

She picks up a pint glass and starts to pull the tap of the beer he likes, but he shakes his head. “Give me a rum.” He squints up at the higher shelves behind her. “The best dark rum you have, whatever that is.”

Tilting her head, she eyes him speculatively. “Since when do you drink rum?”

He shrugs. “Since today.”

She pours him a double, sliding the glass down the bar into his waiting hand. He takes a drink and closes his eyes, savoring the burn and the warmth that blooms in his chest.

“Roni, do you ever get the sense that everything in this world is just… wrong?” he asks.

She puts the bottle of rum back on the shelf. “Wrong?”

“Sometimes I feel like this isn’t the life I’m supposed to be leading. That there’s another life out there, waiting for me, and I just need to remember it and find my way back.” He’s never said anything like this out loud before. It feels good. Strangely, it feels less crazy.

Roni keeps her back to him, rearranging bottles that don’t look like they need to be rearranged. She doesn’t respond.

“Have you ever felt that way?” he asks.

She turns, picking up a rag and wiping down the bar. “I think everyone feels that way sometimes, Rogers. That doesn’t mean it’s real.” She isn’t meeting his eyes, and there’s a catch in her voice.

“Maybe.” He takes another drink of rum, closes his eyes, and makes a wish.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the fact that Colin said at press tour, that his cursed personality "There's a sense of loss there, and he doesn't know what it is, what's missing." I ended up with a fic where he has a pretty good idea what's missing, even if he isn't sure if it's real.


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